What's 'radical' really mean?

Heidi Stevens, Tribune Newspapers

Perhaps not since the '80s has the word "radical" enjoyed such a heyday. Only now it's rarely preceded by "totally."

Some of us were taught, way back in high school civics class, that the term radical existed on one end of the so-called political spectrum and referred to someone on the far left. On the opposite end of the spectrum were reactionaries — people who associated themselves with the far right. And in the middle were moderates.

So has the definition of the word changed, or were those high school spectrums just an overly simplified look at our nation's political makeup?

Maybe a little of both, says Timothy Patrick McCarthy, lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University and co-editor of "The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition" (New Press). We tracked McCarthy down while he vacationed in San Francisco, appropriately enough, to chat about the history of the term.

"The word radical has always meant different things to different people," McCarthy says. "It's always been a contested term."

At its very core, he says, radicalism refers to "a more far-reaching vision for what society should be like." But that vision, obviously, has always taken on many shapes and forms.

"Certainly politically in the context of the United States and even the revolutionary movements that took place in Europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries, radical was associated with a revolutionary desire to overthrow the existing regime," he says. "It was more likely to be associated with dismantling of political and democratic systems of power that were based on fundamental inequalities, which would also be associated, of course, with the left."

In the 1960s, McCarthy says, the term became associated with more strident and violent movements. The civil rights and feminist movements were moving the country forward — thanks in part to some then-radical thinkers. At the same time, of course, a more conservative movement was taking hold among folks who weren't embracing the ensuing changes with open arms.

"That was the critical moment when you saw radicalism become more associated with violent extremism rather than revolutionary imagination," McCarthy says. Which opened the term up for folks on both ends of the spectrum.

"Radicals often see themselves agitating from the margins, outside of institutions of power," McCarthy says. "Both the left and right have that in common. We see an embrace of violence as part of the expression of radicalism when people feel they have no voice in our democracy. Whether it's the Black Panthers or an abortion clinic bomber, they feel like, 'Violence is the only way we're going to mix this up. The only way we're going to affect change.'"

But violence and radicalism are far from synonymous. As the term radical has morphed and evolved over the years, it has also been saddled with a negative connotation. And that, McCarthy says, is a shame.

"To see radicalism as only a bad thing is short-sighted. This nation is filled with examples of people identifying as radicals who moved us forward as a nation," he says. "Among our nation's most egalitarian and democratic thinkers are people who've been radicals, and they've pushed the nation to all sorts of progress."